Person on phone. Photo By Metro Creative Service

WOODLAND—An “internet outage that we had last month (July)” in Woodland Township previously raised by Deputy Mayor Mark Herndon, had posed a “pretty dangerous situation” for township residents, according to the municipality’s new emergency management coordinator, Christopher Stopero, in expanded comments on the matter during an Aug. 27 governing body meeting.

“Obviously inconvenient, but also extremely dangerous,” is how he further put it.

According to Stopero, also the assistant chief of the Woodland Volunteer Fire and EMS Company, the “internet phones” ultimately turned on “for at least one resident” about “an hour before they had to call 911 for their husband.”

“So, it really could have been a much-worse situation,” declared Stopero of the circumstances in a rural town with already limited cellular phone service.

Stopero later told this newspaper, when asked for more details about the incident’s timeframe, that, “We believe the outage started overnight between July 4 and 5,” based on resident reports, and “Woodland Fire and EMS was notified of the outage around 5 a.m. on the 5th, but it likely started overnight.”

“The outage ended at different times for different parts of town, and cell and home internet came back on at different times, but our best guess of total town-wide restoration was on July 6 around noon,” Stopero added. “From the reports we received, this outage affected all cellular providers, as well as home internet services provided by Verizon.”

He also noted there was a “second cellular outage” on July 10 that lasted approximately four to five hours, which started around 3 a.m.” but “we have not been told if this was at all related to the first outage.”

Stopero, who took over Aug. 1 as municipal emergency management coordinator for Michael Huber, described that he has since been in touch with Verizon (and AT&T), “but did not get too far” with respect to “what their official stance was” on the incident that had occurred, “other than that a “network outage” had been experienced.

Stopero said he is now working with county emergency management officials to “dig a little deeper into that.”

A spokesperson for Verizon told this newspaper they would check into this matter and get back in touch, but did not as of press time.

The state Office of Emergency Management, which is part of the New Jersey State Police, has Verizon and AT&T representatives as part of its emergency response structure. Stopero reported that he has since spoken to representatives of all three agencies, and “if something like that were to happen again, they do have deployable mobile cell phone towers that they can get out here.”

However, he noted, there is a “response time” of 24 to 72 hours.

“So, depending on how fast they want to be (with deployment), it may help, may not,” declared Stopero, noting that he now has their contact information on file, and adding he hopes the “state police version of that would be the fastest one to deploy.”

According to the new emergency management coordinator, “if something like that happens again,” the township fire department will also “deploy our mobile command center over at the firehouse that has satellite internet.”

“So, at least residents can use the internet if they just need to for whatever reason,” Huber said. “They can stop by the firehouse and do that.”

Additionally, Stopero said that in moving forward, “I will make sure that the firehouse remains staffed” during an outage.

“So, if you can’t call 911, maybe you can at least drive to the firehouse and initiate some sort of response,” Stopero declared.

Stopero also announced that the township emergency management now has a dedicated Facebook page that residents can follow for updates: https://www.facebook.com/WoodlandTownshipOEM .

Herndon asked about the local emergency management office’s budget, to which Township Administrator and Clerk Maryalice Brown responded, “We can’t really do anything about it now because our budgets are already in place for the year,” but that budget discussions for 2026 will commence in December or January.

Brown and Township Chief Financial Officer Kathy Rosmando then confirmed “he does have $1,000,” with Rosmando adding, “We can always transfer money if there is something that he needs.”

 

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